Green Room

NY-23: Hoffman Leads – and Now It Looks Like He Really Does!

Politico now reports new polling in the NY-23 special election that shows that the previous poll by the Club for Growth, which we talked about in an earlier post, was no fluke: Even the Daily Kos’s polling now sees a huge surge towards conservative candidate Doug Hoffman in the last week before Tuesday’s vote.

And just as we predicted, DIABLO* (Democrat in all but label only) Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava, the liberal Republican hand-picked by eleven GOP committee apparatchiks, as we reported in More On Dierdre “Dede” Scozzafava, has all but fallen off the radar. The race has come down to a face-off between Hoffman and Democratic candidate Bill Owens:

The latest round of polling gave evidence that Hoffman is on the rise and has pulled even with, or ahead of, Owens as Scozzafava has fallen into third place. In a newly-released poll commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos, Hoffman is within one point of Owens, 33 percent to 32 percent, with Scozzafava lagging well behind in third place with 21 percent….

Even more encouraging to Hoffman’s backers, the Daily Kos poll shows Hoffman is winning over more Republican voters than the GOP’s own nominee. He leads Scozzafava 41 to 34 percent among Republicans — a sign that GOP voters are increasingly identifying with Hoffman as the true Republican candidate.

And he holds a 19-point lead among independents over Owens, 47 percent to 28 percent, suggesting that his outsider message is resonating, and that his support isn’t confined to the conservative base.

Evidence is mounting (a favorite liberal-stream media word) that far from making a “blunder,” Sarah Palin had her finger on the crystal ball: Hoffman looks like a winner now, and Palin was the first Republican heavy-hitter to come out for him. (Fred Thompson was an earlier endorser; but Thompson is a spent force. As great a guy as he usually was, he is the GOP’s past, not its future.)

And at last, Hoffman is getting some lovin’ from “mainstream” (that is, more conservative) Republicans: Politico reports that National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX, 92%) is making it clear that the Republican conference would be very pleased if Hoffman is elected:

“He would be very welcome, with open arms,” Sessions told POLITICO in an interview off the House floor.

And former NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK, 88%) now supports Hoffman’s insolent campaign against Democrat Owens and formal Republican candidate Scozzafava. Meanwhile, Hoffman’s popularity is still growing among the rank and file:

Hoffman, whose campaign barely had a presence in the district as recently as two weeks ago, is getting help from a well-oiled conservative ground game, with hundreds of volunteers from tea party groups and leading conservative organizations working in upstate New York to help him get out the vote next Tuesday.

Hoffman’s campaign now has five campaign offices teeming with volunteers across the sprawling district. By contrast, Scozzafava’s campaign has just one office in her home base.

The anti-tax Club for Growth, pro-life Susan B. Anthony’s List, Eagle Forum and anti-illegal immigration Minuteman PAC all have staffers on the ground knocking on doors, making calls to Republican voters and delivering pro-Hoffman literature to churches.

You may or may not have read it here first, but I think I might have been the first among all those blogs I personally follow — that would be three, counting Big Lizards — to flatly predict that:

The race will, in the next couple of days, come down to a two-way between Doug Hoffman and Bill Owens;

And that Hoffman will win — and win convincingly. Perhaps not with an outright majority, unless Scozzafava sees the “mene mene” on the wall and drops out; but a solid victory of 5-8 points over Owens, with Scozzafava in third by double-digits.

As usual, when Big Lizards predicts, we invite everyone to track our predictions and see if we know what we’re talking about… or whether we fall flat on our egg.

* The term DIABLO does indeed appear to have been minted by Mark Steyn; Charles “the Sauerkraut” Krauthammer was merely the fence.

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There’s whispers over on RedState that Pataki is going to endorse Hoffman. Apparently he’s VERY popular in NY-23, and won the district handily in his last election. This could end up in a big win for Hoffman.

Soon there’ll be talk of the “Red River Shootout”, not the Texas vs OU shootout, but the Perry vs Hutchinson duel in Texas. A couple of very RNC players with political histories trying to convince voters of their need for the vote to fill the seat of governor of Texas.

Talk about a couple of losers. They really should be running as Democrats. Tax and spend priorities on both of them. The state legislature is barely keeping the state from becoming a second rate financial disaster. Yes, Texas is running budget supluses last time I looked, but not because of Perry’s efforts. And Hutchinson voted for both stimulus bills from Washington, as did Cornyn, the other senator.

It’s easy to laugh about Democratic vs independent or Republican races in blue states. Fun to watch from the sidelines. But to have to witness a red state go through the nightmare of a “who’s most conservative” contest when both are limp rags of conservatism is embarassing. And knowing that there are other more financially conservative players on the bench is frustrating as well.

Hope the blue staters have a good laugh when this news from Texas heats up.

There’s whispers over on RedState that Pataki is going to endorse Hoffman. Apparently he’s VERY popular in NY-23, and won the district handily in his last election. This could end up in a big win for Hoffman.

Not to worry, Acorn will be refunded by the weasels in congress just in time to influence all the elections in the coming week. We need to call our elected reps today to demand that they keep this criminal organization defunded.

I’d love to see Hoffman win. My guess is that he’s not going to be a leading conservative thinker, but if he’s reliable and honest that’s enough.

The results may also underscore the idea that the GOP Brand is NOT a strength among independents, that a GOP-issues (or at least what we’d like to see as a GOP-issues candidate) may in fact do better among the broader voter base if freed from the Republican tag.

I don’t think insolent is the word you wanted, and I can’t really figure out what it was supposed to be instead.

It was insolent in that it was contrary to the wishes of the Party.
Of course, nobody is subserviant to any party and free people are free to disagree, but I can understand the use of the word in that context.